Tyree Daye: The Process of Writing Poetry
“My writing comes from intuition,” Tyree Daye says, starting off a 10 a.m. Zoom call. He picks a day in the week in which he dedicates writing to (Sundays) and does just that—he writes. “It doesn’t matter if I have a million papers to grade, or chores to do.” Daye doesn’t have a clear idea of what he will be creating for that Sunday, just that he will create something. He compares his writing process to playing Jazz: “Jazz musicians, when they go out onto the stage, they just play.”
Daye, a poet and educator from Youngsville, North Carolina has just recently published his second poetry book Cardinal. The book’s predecessor, River Hymns, which won the American Poetry Review/Honickman First Book Prize, is a compilation of poems that examines his Southern family’s values and secrets. River Hymns is unforgettable not just because of the writing, but the complex relationship we’re given a glimpse into: a young Black man’s history and his future.
Daye speaks to a group of Elon students enrolled in an entry level creative writing class over video chat with a casual demeanor. He is located at home in his study, surrounded by shelves piled with poetry books and his dog napping by his chair. “She just fell asleep, I think,” he mentions, referencing the dog who is unfortunately not in frame.
Daye’s explanation of parallels between music and writing is something that stands out the most in the conversation. “The tools and rules I have for writing are already in me, so [when writing] I just go out and play,” he says. Daye then goes back and looks at the newly composed poem later, deciding to move and change things around. “That would be the engineer in me, I guess.”
Growing up in the country, Daye finds himself doing most of his writing outside. He finds the life of the outdoors to be an influential part of his process. “If you just sit and really listen, you hear birds, cicadas, even crickets.” He finds inspiration from nature and its inhabitants, even sometimes incorporating that into his writing. Daye shows us an unseen poem he has in a file on his computer. “It’s a bad poem,” he remarks. In the poem he uses a metaphor about an earth worm’s inability to see, which he learned about through research. Research, he says, an integral part of a writer’s process.
Daye gives advice to the students who are beginning their poetry endeavors: “Start listening to things, eavesdrop on people’s conversations. You don’t know what kind of language you could get.” Daye stresses the idea of being an active participant in the world, as listening and learning new ideas is the most influential way to grow your writing.
Something that may surprise you: Daye doesn’t keep drafts of his work. “Once I change something, it’s changed forever,” he says. “I would drive myself insane keeping multiple drafts.” Daye admits he wastes a lot of paper due to his unique process, finding that he can only truly edit his pieces when he has it on paper rather than a computer screen. “For River Hymns, I probably printed it out a million times.” Daye poses the question: “What process works best for you? For me, it’s editing on a piece of paper,” his reasoning being a mixture of poor eyesight and love for hardcopies.
“But maybe for you guys, your generation can see better on a computer,” Daye jokes.
In River Hymns, there’s a lot of talk of death, and a student poses a somewhat personal question for Daye about this, “Do you write about death because you're terrified of it, or because you embrace it?”
Daye is quick to come up with an answer: “I’m absolutely terrified of it.” A lot of poets like to write about the idea of death, Daye says. He goes on to talk about the people in his life who are deceased: his “Uncle Boo Boo” (mentioned in River Hymns) and his Grandmother, the two people that he credits with his obsession of death. “Because I’m a poet of memory, I’m always looking for something in their death to tell me about the world,” he says. “Trying to make meaning of it, that’s what poets do, we try to make meaning of our lives.”
Does Daye ever regret sharing his poetry with the world? Only in a perfectionist’s struggle kind of way. “I sometimes wish I did something different, changed certain lines,” he admits. In terms of being vulnerable, Daye says he’s been writing for so long that vulnerability isn’t something that bothers him anymore.
Daye stands up to drag his white board into frame, muttering an “excuse me” to the resting dog by his feet. “This is something that you might want to take with you when you start writing your own poems,” he tells us. Daye draws a triangle with a black erase marker. “A poem is made up of three parts, represented by a triangle.” He credits this idea that was taught to him to Steven Dobyns and his book Best Words, Best Order. The three parts of the poetic triangle, “emotion, image, and logic” work together to make a poem. “In a poem, if a speaker shows you the image of nothing but grey skies the whole time, you could say the emotion in them is sadness,” says Daye. “The logic part is the speaker telling you what is happening inside their mind. The image is going to show you, the logic is going to tell you.”
Poets can have different preferences on which sides of the “triangle” they use most often. Daye explains his own: “I am a poet that leans heavy on image and emotion.” He revels in showing, not telling as much as possible, a strategy that makes his poems come alive and keeps readers eager to turn the page.
Check out Tyree Daye’s new book here.